Micron develops stick of gum-sized 480GB SSD for Ultrabooks

Micron and Crucial have launched a brand new range of SSDs this week carrying the name M500. Both companies are boasting of the M500 being the first terabyte-class drive (960GB) with a price tag below $600, but this new SSD has some other features worth mentioning, too.

You’ll typically pay between $350 and $500 for a 512GB SSD at the moment, so a 960GB drive for under $600 is certainly a step forward in bringing costs down. It’s still a lot of cash to invest in storage, though.

The M500 will be available in 120GB, 240GB, and 480GB models as well as the new near-terabyte drive, and they all take advantage of Micron’s 20nm MLC NAND flash and SATA 6Gb/s controller. You’ve also got a choice of two form factors: the 2.5-inch mSATA and M.2, meaning they are suited to use in very thin devices such as Ultrabooks and tablets. But it’s worth noting the M.2 form factor only seems to support up to 480GB.

Ultrabooks especially is one area where the M500 could prove popular. Performance of the drives is rated at 500MB/s reads and 400MB/s writes (for the 480GB and 960GB models). But they also ship with DEVSLP — a deep sleep mode that means power use rated below 5 milliwatts when sleeping. To give you some idea of how much of an improvement that is, Micron and Crucial claim a 93% power saving over the C400 SSD in the same state.

The size of these drives is also fairly impressive. Micron says the 480GB M500 is about the same size as a stick of gum at just 80 x 22mm using the M.2 form factor. Combined with improved thermal management, better power loss/error recovery systems, and hardware encryption as standard, it should find favor with laptop/Ultrabook manufacturers.

We can expect to see the M500 SSDs appearing inside devices and for purchase through Crucial in the second quarter of this year. And if you’re wondering how an SSD is manufactured, Crucial has put together this video explaining the process: